“Forget the Church, Follow Jesus”
was the command from Newsweek’s April cover story. The cover (and article) featured an unscarred
urban Jesus, a grand moral teacher that would shun the church in America America Assisi Jefferson
saw Jesus as a good moral teacher devoid of a divine nature, whereas Francis’
rule was “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his
footsteps.” The difference between
Jefferson and Francis is, in part, that Jefferson
carefully used a razor to cut-out biblical passages that he thought did not
reflect the teachings of Jesus the Nazarene. However, Francis worked hard to
follow the whole of Jesus’ teachings in the Bible while emphasizing his call to
a life of poverty and preaching.
While there are things
to learn from Sullivan’s article, there is more to lament. Sullivan affirms Jefferson ’s
aim that one should be “a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.” But what are those doctrines? Sullivan proclaims those doctrines are “not
the supernatural claims that, fused with politics and power gave successive
generations wars, inquisitions, pogroms, reformations, and
counterreformations.” Sullivan skillfully uses the same Jeffersonian razor to
remove the good that Jesus and his church has done throughout the history of
the world. Historian and sociologist
Rodney Stark at Baylor
University
In his book The Victory of Reason, Stark advances what
can be described as “a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea:
that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly
responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and
economic breakthroughs of the past millennium. On Stark’s view, what has propelled the West
is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of
science and the humanities against religious belief. Christian theology, he
argues is the very font of reason: While the world’s other great belief systems
emphasized mystery, obedience, or introspection, Christianity alone embraced
logic and reason as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and progress.” This
has made all the difference.
It is true that the
institutionalized church has led to witch hunts—Stark’s discussion of this is
very interesting—and abuses of power. And
to that end we can agree with Sullivan to “forget the church and follow
Jesus”. But I must add that the
reliable, biblical portrait of Jesus still calls out to us today and Jesus says,
“Follow
Me, and Be My Church.” I
continue to be grateful that NewSong remains a faithful community of
Christ-followers that worships the scarred yet risen Lord Jesus who is more
than just a good man willing to suffer an unjust execution or merely a good
moral teacher. He is the resurrected
Lord, Savior, and King who laid down his life to bring people back into the
family of God and who now are calls upon his Church to be his winsome
ambassadors of reconciliation to the world (2 Cor. 5)
George Haraksin
Lead pastor
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